Hetty Green (1834-1916)

She was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and grew up in New York. In 1867, she married Edward Henry Green and for a couple of years they lived in England. Returning to New York, she became active as an investor having inherited $1-million from her father. She was extremely cautious and invested in gilt edge mortgages, real estate, bonds secured by mortgages and other interest bearing or dividend paying securities. Not infrequently, she was called upon to aid in relieving the money market, which caused her to be regarded, after the death of Russell Sage, as the chief individual money lender in the world. For many years she was a large depositor at the Chemical National Bank of which she was a director. At the time of her death, she was universally praised for her sagacity and her unerring judgement in selecting her investments, always relying on her own intuition rather than the counsel of others. Bankers who watched the growth of her fortune estimated it to be anywhere anywhere between $100-$200-million. 

She owned real estate in New York, Boston, Chicago and St. Louis, and the bulk of her fortune was invested in industrial and mining securities. She lived between a quiet apartment in Hoboken and the old Green homestead at Bellows Falls before moving to New York after her daughter's marriage in 1909. She had two children (listed above) and, "a brilliant mind, a quick wit and a fund of repartee". One day she took out a license to carry a pistol. Asked why, she replied: "Mostly to protect myself against lawyers. I'm not much afraid of burglars or highwaymen". She died at her home, No. 7 West 90th Street.